While I understand the desire for medical confidentiality, I think when it comes to space travel, the public, or at very least the scientific community, deserves to know some details. It’s not like we’re swimming in data about medical emergencies in zero-G, every little bit is important.

I don’t know if people are just not recognizing the metric fuckton of nuance with this situation, or they’re being willfully ignorant. Either way, not my monkeys, not my circus.

A lot of people don’t seem to remember Alex Jones getting banned from YouTube in 2018. While rightwing, ultra-MAGA’s were already a thing, they were relatively small compared today. Alex Jones was the first high profile ban from social media and it was like tossing gasoline onto a small bush fire.

You have to remember that Trump did not win the first time because he had an army of fanatics. A lot of other factors were at play; from people still upset about the DNC’s snubbing of Bernie, to people who weren’t fully paying attention (remember, politics used to be boring), to people who voted for Trump simply “for the lols” (don’t discount this last group, any historical account that doesn’t factor in how important internet memes were to getting that man elected is being willfully ignorant) . Die-hard MAGA’s were relatively rare, and usually a source of ridicule.

Until their spokespeople started getting banned from places. It seems so small by today’s standards. People get banned and deplatformed all the time. But Alex Jones was the first real incident, and people saw it as a massive attack on free speech. To his relatively small number of followers, the man had his free speech rights violated by the left-wing news cabal for daring to speak the TRUTH™. Suddenly, all their bullshit was justified.

I’ve always been pretty far-left but I got a deep chill when that happened. I remember remarking to my friends that banning political speech, no matter how full of shit, would only cause problems in the long run, and so it has. Precedent was broken, and the right took it as a declaration of war. I truly believe things would not have gotten nearly as insane as they are had Google not decided to ban him. He deserved it, but they opened a door that couldn’t be shut again; and following this was a couple years of high-profile bans of rightwing figureheads and safe-spaces, all cumulating to the shut down of /r/theDonald in 2020. And the infection, which had been contained to a few small corners of the internet, suddenly exploded.

Oh, so the US is not getting a single drop then. Everything Trump says is a lie. Everything.

This may come as a surprise to you, but you can both condemn Trump’s actions AND recognize that Maduro was an illegitimate leader that stole an election according to every third-party audit. And not just like “well it was close, who’s to say who really won?” but like the votes went 2-1 to his opponent. He lost BAD, but decided to lie, cling to power and attempt to imprison his opponent. Maduro is a vicious dictator and calling him an illegitimate leader is not just a claim, it’s a fact.

And yes, it’s also true that Trump’s actions were an illegal act of war. Full stop. No questions at all there. But the people trying to condemn this by making Maduro out to be some innocent saint are either trolls ignoring his corruption, or people so ignorant as to the situation that they should maybe just shut the fuck up until they spend more than 2 minutes learning about it.

Yea? How’s that lookin currently?

And then we should get all the world leaders in a big room and tell them they’re being bad. Then they’ll all sing and hold hands and stop all wars. And then later my mommy can make us all dino nuggies and we can watch Trollhunters on Netflix.

So what exactly did you do to piss off the Amazon Returns department? Because from my experience, they are the most lenient company when it comes to returns/refunds. I’ve had stuff arrive broken, or scuffed up, or it was the wrong item, or I just plain didn’t like a product and every time I’ve been able to submit a return without having to interact with a single person.

I feel like you either have to be lying about your experience, didn’t even try to return it, or did something that got your account flagged.

Frothing at the mouth

I’m not sure it was a lie, it’s the kind of thing that’s so minor it’s easy for someone on the marketing team to just not know about.

It’s like if a snack company put out a message saying they used no animal products and then later found out that a derivative of beeswax was used to lubricate some of the mechanisms in their packing machine.

If you want to be absolutely inflexible and refuse to allow any exceptions to the rules, no matter the circumstances, that’s fine. But you’ve gotta recognize the irony in that line of reasoning being more machine-like than human.

The Fediverse is a fucking fantasy world. Some real shit takes from people who live on the fringe who have convinced themselves that everyone thinks and acts like them.

How inconvenient to only be able to upgrade on 95% of PC’s out there.

And do what exactly? They aren’t going to get punished for it, so what’s the fucking point?

I’m not disagreeing with that, but saying they “wouldn’t lose much by switching” is laughably untrue.

I’m not on either of them, but I’m also not confused as to how a group that’s wanting to run ads might prefer an audience of hundreds of millions of people instead of tens of millions.

Except, of course, for audience size. Which, if you are running ads, is sort of the main goal.

They still wipe their shit with their bare hand. I am ok calling any society primitive that can’t figure out how to use some form of water to wash their ass, or AT LEAST toilet paper.

I’ve heard that claim before. Anyone have a source?

Unfortunately the aforementioned list will never contain the most “stone cold killer”, most dangerous predator species of 'em all, because it’s a list kept by that very species themselves.

nods knowingly

Wallabies…

How much of this is influenced by people just paying more attention to those around them when they see someone dressed as Batman?

Like, personally, when I’m on public transit I go into full disassociation mode. I wouldn’t even notice a pregnant woman because I’m trying my best to ignore everyone. But someone dressed as Batman would snap me out of that. Its hard to ignore someone dressed as Batman, and once you focus on him, you start focusing on other people as well.